Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology, and the Natural Sciences Can Teach Us About Economics

Forecast: What Physics, Meteorology, and the Natural Sciences Can Teach Us About Economics

by Mark Buchanan (Author)

Synopsis

In this thoroughly researched and piercingly intelligent book, physicist Mark Buchanan shows how a simple feedback loop can lead to major consequences, the kind predictable by mathematical models but hard for most people to anticipate. From his unique perspective, Buchanan argues that our basic assumptions about economic markets - that they are for the most part stable, with occasional interruptions - are simply wrong. Markets really act more like weather: a brief heat wave can become a massive storm in a matter of a few days, or even hours. Forecast re-imagines the basics of the financial world, with consequences that affect everyone.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 11 Apr 2013

ISBN 10: 1408827379
ISBN 13: 9781408827376
Book Overview: A groundbreaking book that uses physics to show how instability is inherent in economic markets, just as thunderstorms are a part of the weather

Media Reviews
A lucid, absorbing story * New Scientist *
If Mark Buchanan is right, economics might become a real science. A new generation could morph it into a branch of physics by applying rice piles, power laws, positive feedback, phase changes, chaos and complexity theory. Who knows, they might even work out how to avert catastrophes * New Scientist *
Author Bio
Physicist Mark Buchanan is a former editor at Nature and New Scientist, and is the author of numerous magazine and newspaper articles internationally. He currently writes monthly columns for the financial media outlet Bloomberg View, as well as for Nature Physics. He has written two prize-nominated non-fiction books, Ubiquity: The Science of History and Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks, and, most recently, The Social Atom. He lives in Dorset, England. http://physicsoffinance.blogspot.co.uk/